Chris - I really should come down and take a look at what you have. A lot of your parts wouldn't fit my '54 Clipper but maybe some would. Maybe some of the chrome bumper trim. Is the windshield clear or green tint? Any chance you have a front bumper in halfway decent condition? It's not hard for it to be better than my current one in every measurable way.

-Kevin

I had no idea replacement lenses were being made. Those look really nice Mike.

-Kevin

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Wow, that's a pretty decent collection. The '54 convertible and Patrician look pretty nice. And is that factory A/C on the Patrician?

I would love to dig through that parts storage. Looks like you can find most everything you need for a '51-54 car.

I'm kind of curious about that green Patrician. The overall car looks to be in great condition, besides the obvious accident damage on the rear. It would be a pain to fix that, but it would be a shame to see a car as nice as that go to waste.

-Kevin

According to Ross the parking brake cables won't stretch. Go through the procedure he outlined in the video and see how it does.

-Kevin

Thanks JWL, that is helpful. The weatherstrip adhesive may be a good route to go.

I finally started working on the hood project. I had my wife and oldest daughter help get the hood off the car. I wasn't sure how heavy it would be once it was off, but now I know it's not bad. The underside of the hood had lots of pitting and rust, along with some leftover insulation.

I took an angle grinder with a wire brush to it and got it all cleaned off. Then hit it with a good scrubbing of Ospho to neutralize anything that remained. I let it sit for a day then sprayed a wet coat of black epoxy primer. I'm going to let it dry then probably hit the visible areas with flat black paint to protect the primer. It won't hold up long term with UV.

I removed the hinges, the springs, and the rubber bumpers for the hood. I got the sandblasting cabinet back up and running after a year dormant and cleaned everything off. The hinges were caked in grime, dirt, and dust. They cleaned up nicely. I then painted them with the same metallic paint I've been using for the other bolts that I've cleaned and restored.

The springs were hung with weights on the end to open them up a bit, then sprayed black. The rubber bits had decades of dirt and lots of paint overspray on them, and the sandblaster made them look nearly new again.

While I had the hood off I took the opportunity to clean up the firewall a bit. The original paint is on there and I have no plans of repainting the car anytime soon. So I decided to keep the original paint there as an homage to what came from the factory. It was filthy and covered in primer and paint overspray. I did a lot of wet sanding, compounding, and waxing to bring back the original color and some of its luster.

-Kevin

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How are you liking the upholstery paint? I've always been curious to see how it worked/looked. The pictures do make it look rather nice. At the very least it should do very well as a long term temporary fix. Hopefully it will allow you to put off redoing all the upholstery for a while.

-Kevin

The car still looks very nice, especially in photos. I know how you feel about mediocre paint work. That's the way mine is also, and I don't have the courage to attempt a full repaint.

It sounds like the car is in good hands now and will be well taken care of.

Since you brought up music while driving the Packard, I'm much like you. Some Perry Como, but lately it's been a lot more Elvis, Frank Sinatra, and various doo-wop groups. It's fun to cruise through town with all the windows down listening to some good classics.

-Kevin

Joe - how quiet is your fan? And did you mount to the front of the radiator? I would love pictures of how you did it.

The wiring is all there for the current electric fan, complete to a dash switch to turn it on. But there is no temperature switch currently. I could pretty easily add that in I think and keep the rest of the wiring in tact. Just plug the new fan in.

-Kevin

Very slow progress right now. The starter is off for a rebuild currently. Once we disassembled it, we found that the insulation on one of the brush wires was cut open. My friend turned the armature on a lathe and it was definitely out of round. You can see one of the spots in the picture. The coil windings in the bad spots tested out okay. He's going to swap the field coils for 12V, and I'm going to replace the solenoid with a 12V unit as well.

The first fan belt I got was too small. The second one is too big. The adjuster for the alternator only gives me an inch of adjustment, so I'm going to see if I can find a longer adjuster and put that on.

I would like to replace the existing auxiliary electric fan (pusher) in front of the radiator. I want to put a quieter one in that has a temperature probe to control it. How does one go about removing the nose bodywork in front of the radiator? How do I remove the lever controlling the thermostatically operated louvers?

-Kevin

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I think you made the right call with a new tank. Otherwise you'll be chasing fuel issues forever. You can always get an inexpensive temporary set of tires to use until you're ready to get some nice whitewalls. I recall BigKev did that for a while until his car was mostly finished.

-Kevin